


Here With Me

by Dragonflies_and_Katydids



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Dialogue Generator Challenge, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-02
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-26 19:34:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3862132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonflies_and_Katydids/pseuds/Dragonflies_and_Katydids
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Could you be happy here with me?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Dialogue Generator Challenge](http://ashestodustdusttoashes.tumblr.com/post/116960682438/cullrian-dialogue-generator-challenge), which I stumbled on by way of [this](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3791644) story. Sounded interesting even though I've never done anything like it before, so I figured I'd give it a try (I hope I'm not crashing a private party). This is the third prompt I got. C'mon, give me something hard!
> 
> This has three chapters because I couldn't decide which direction to take the story, so I cheated and wrote it both ways. Chapter 1 is the lead in, and it's the same for both. Chapter 2 has the romance-novel ending, and chapter 3 has the heroic/tragic ending. It's like a really really short Choose Your Own Adventure!
> 
> Totally unedited and written in about two hours (sorry, RL stuff demanding attention, not to mention two unfinished fics I should be writing instead), so feel free to point out any slips.

"Could you be happy here with me?" Cullen asks.

Standing just inside Skyhold's gate, Dorian shifts his feet and looks away. The horse, sensing his distraction, again tries to turn back toward the stable and its comfortable stall, but he takes a tighter grip on the reins and pulls it up short. Or tries to, but the stupid beast drags him a half step forward before he can set his feet.

Cullen grabs the horse's bridle, muscles flexing in his bare arm as he does with one hand what Dorian couldn't manage with both and the full weight of his body. Growling, Dorian jerks on the reins, pulling the horse's head out of Cullen's grasp. That he knows he could do it only because Cullen allowed it just serves to make him angrier.

"Dorian," Cullen says, and all Dorian's anger turns to smoke, blown away by the wind ripping through the gate.

"Cullen," he says, tipping his chin up defiantly.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the romance-novel ending (aka the "fluff" tag).

"Could you be happy here with me?" Cullen asks again, stepping forward to invade his space and looking every bit as angry as Dorian was a moment ago. He's barely half dressed, his skin pebbled from the cold, and Dorian suspects he bolted from his office as soon as he found Dorian's letter. The letter that was supposed to avert this conversation, Void take Cullen and his abominable need to be up before the sun.

"What kind of question is that?" Dorian mutters, very aware of the guards listening avidly while pretending to look anywhere else.

"The only one that matters!" Cullen says. He raises a hand, and Dorian realizes he's brought the letter with him. Apparently to shake it in Dorian's face, because that's exactly what he does. "What in Andraste's name is this?"

His anger has been replaced by fear: not fear of Cullen so much as fear of what Cullen wants from him. Not that he hasn't long since perfected the art of hiding any undesirable emotion. "It's called a letter, Commander," he says, as patronizingly as possible.

"No," Cullen snaps. "It's fucking cowardice."

"Why did you ask me, then, since you seem to have already settled on your own answer?" He looks past Cullen at the guard with the least chance of avoiding eye contact. "Open the gate."

"Leave the fucking gate shut," Cullen growls, and the guard twitches but doesn't move.

"You've just finished repairing these lovely walls," Dorian says sweetly. "Do you really want me to put a hole in them?"

"No, I want you to talk to me like an adult, not slink off like a...a fool in some stupid ballad!"

Now Dorian's angry again, and he closes the last small distance between them so they're nose-to-nose. Or nose-to-chin, since Cullen has the gall to be several inches taller. Dorian refuses to let that stop him. "Because calling me childish is definitely the hallmark of adult conversation."

"If you want me to stop calling you childish, then stop acting like it!"

"I don't recall anything childish about what we did last night," Dorian says, in the voice he's never used outside of a seduction attempt.

It's hard to say if the insinuation makes Cullen blush, with his face already so red from anger. Dorian knows it's a low blow, but he's past caring. Panic is fighting with the anger, and he's shaking with the need to do exactly as he threatened: knock a hole in the wall and escape before he sinks.

The hand holding the letter snaps out toward the guard. "You're dismissed. Both of you."

Dorian doesn't look away to see their faces, but he suspects they're as much disappointed to miss the show as relieved to escape the coming fireball. "You can't keep me here," he says.

To his surprise, Cullen's shoulders drop and he steps back. "No," he agrees, and the pain on his face makes Dorian close his eyes. "I can't keep you here if you want to go."

His calloused fingers touch Dorian's cheek, that hesitant caress Dorian remembers from their first night together, as if Cullen's waiting for him to vanish between one blink and the next. Over the years between then and now, Cullen's hands have grown more sure but no less gentle, as if Dorian is precious, as if this thing between them is something to be treated with reverence, something to be guarded and fought for and cherished.

"I can't keep you here if you want to go," Cullen says again, and his hand moves across Dorian's cheek, sliding through the short hair above his ear, curling around the back of his head to pull him in. Cullen's skin is cold, but the curve of his neck is still a perfect fit for Dorian's nose and cheek.

Cullen's other hand, still holding Dorian's letter, moves down his arm and takes the horse's reins from his unresisting fingers. "Do you want to go?" Cullen asks.

"I wrote you a letter," Dorian says, but he can't quite get the disparaging tone right.

"I know," Cullen says, and he's certainly having no trouble with disparaging tones. "I read it. For all that it filled an entire page, it didn't say very much."

"I spent hours on it!"

"Maybe you could have spent a few more thinking about _why_ you were writing it?" Cullen turns his head to lay his cheek on the top of Dorian's head. "Look me in the eye and tell me you want to go, and I'll open the gate for you myself."

"It's a bit hard to look you in the eye from this position."

"I'm not keeping you from moving."

It's true. Cullen's hand is loose in his hair, his other hand not even touching Dorian. With a start, Dorian realizes that both his arms are around Cullen's waist, his hands pressed tightly to the cold skin at the small of his back.

There's a rustle of paper as Cullen brings the letter up above Dorian's head, the horse's reins looped over his fingers. The contrary beast shows no signs of trying to slip away from him.

Cullen clears his throat and says, "I think this was my favorite part. 'Associating with a Tevinter mage can only bring you difficulties and complicate the good work you're trying to do. Given that, it's best that I return home before your reputation is tarnished beyond repair.'"

Hearing his own words read aloud in Cullen's driest voice (the one he uses when some lieutenant has made a truly awe-inspiring mistake), Dorian cringes. Deliberately avoiding the point, he says flippantly, "Ah, my apologies for the mixed metaphor. No matter how many times I review my own writing, some little mistake always seems to slip by. 'Tarnished beyond repair' doesn't quite work, does it? Perhaps broken beyond repair instead? No, no, reputations are tarnished, not broken. You understand my difficulty."

And Cullen...Cullen laughs. "This is why I love you," he whispers, and his fingers tighten against Dorian's scalp as Dorian's entire body goes rigid. "Shush," he says, as if Dorian could say anything right now. "I don't need to hear you say it, and I won't say it again, but I promise, the words aren't actually lethal."

Dorian manages to unlock his throat enough to say, "They don't change anything, either."

"No," Cullen agrees. "But they needed to be said. Along with something else. Since we were speaking of childishness earlier, let's go back there. I'm an adult."

"I know," Dorian says. He tries for the same seductive voice he used before, only to have the words come out plaintive.

"I think sometimes you forget what that means," Cullen says. "I'm an adult, and I'm neither feeble nor mad. Don't you think I should get a say in my own life? Little things only, of course, such as who I want in it."

"Your reputation..."

"As I'm also not a virgin princess, my personal reputation is not my primary concern."

"It should be."

"Not really. As many people as eye me askance and wonder what evil influence you have on me, an equal number..." He clears his throat awkwardly. "Let's say they admire me for my conquest and let it go at that."

"I'm reasonably sure the conquering went the other direction," Dorian mutters, and smiles when Cullen laughs again.

"Whoever I take to my bed will annoy some and worry some and please some. As I don't intend to sleep alone for the rest of my life, I've mostly stopped worrying about it." He shrugs, his chest moving under Dorian's cheek. "And since I win and lose reputation no matter what I do, I'd rather have who I want."

"And that would be?" Dorian asks, needing to hear him say it.

He pulls away, hands on Dorian's shoulders as he meets his eyes. "You, however often you make me tear my hair, but only if you want to stay. I won't try to stop you if you really want to leave." He takes a deep breath, and asks a third time. "Could you be happy here with me?"

"Say it again," Dorian whispers.

Cullen blinks, but obediently starts, "Could you-"

"Not that," Dorian interrupts. "The other thing."

And Cullen laughs, the laugh that's the first thing about him Dorian fell in love with. Cullen pulls him close again and murmurs, "I love you."

"Even when I make you tear your hair?"

"Even then," Cullen says, and Dorian doesn't resist when he turns them both, and the horse, back toward the stables.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you intend to read both endings, wipe this one from your mind before you go on. :) Dorian's reasons for leaving are not the same.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the heroic/tragic ending (aka the "angst" tag).

"Could you be happy here with me?" Cullen asks again, even more softly than before, and he didn't exactly shout it the first time.

Dorian looks past him into Skyhold's courtyard. It's still early, the sun not even over the surrounding mountains yet, but already people are up and about their daily tasks. This isn't Dorian's favorite time of day by any stretch of the imagination, unless he's rolling over to steal the warm place Cullen has left in the bed, seconds before going back to sleep for another few hours. Skyhold's courtyard at dawn is a place he sees rarely, and those rare times have always been while he yawns and stumbles in the Inquisitor's wake as they head out on missions of (sometimes questionable) importance.

Homesickness chokes him, if he can be homesick for a place he hasn't even left yet. It's not as though he can see much from where he stands under the stone arch of the gate. Just scouts and soldiers mostly, and a few visiting nobles up early, or perhaps very late. So his eyes can see little of the place he's lived for the better part of three years, but his memories can fill in the rest all too easily.

He thinks of the hall, and the throne at the end where the Inquisitor renders judgment after far too much thought and agonizing. Like most of the inner circle, Dorian has watched these small and not-so-small dramas unfold and be folded back away, neatly and not-so-neatly. Every time, he feels proud of something he had no hand in starting but that he's helped to build until it's worth a thousand times more than the birthright he traded away, in desperation and spite, when he left Tevinter.

He thinks of Solas's abandoned mural, which the Inquisitor refuses to paint over despite the artist's betrayal. People wander through the room day and night; it's almost a required stop on any dignitary's visit to Skyhold. Their polite murmurs of appreciation grate on Dorian's nerves, but every once in a while, one of them looks at the painted lines and really _sees_ , and Dorian forgives all the rest of them.

He thinks of the garden, where he's played and lost more games of chess than he can count. Of the Herald's Rest, where he's drunk far too much terrible Ferelden beer and listened to far too many unbelievable tales, and told far too many ridiculous tales of his own. Of the practice ring, where he's watched Cullen teach and harangue and coax farmers into soldiers: men and women who arrive willing to die for the Inquisition but leave able to do so much more than bleed out on the first enemy's blade.

He thinks of the library, laughably inadequate and plagued by ravens, not to mention nosy Chantry mothers. The only place in Skyhold--in Thedas--where Dorian is happier is wherever he happens to be when Cullen smiles at him.

At last, against his will, he looks at Cullen: terribly under-dressed for the chill of a Frostback dawn in just his boots and trousers, as if he grabbed the first thing that came to hand as he was running out the door. Which is probably exactly what he did, when he woke and found Dorian's note. Void take all morning people, and their annoying habit of rising before a normal person can make a dignified escape. This is not a conversation Dorian wants to have, especially not in front of the studiously averted eyes of the gate guards.

Because his memory is also full of Tevinter. There are the parts everyone in the south thinks of, blood magic and slaves and poisonous politics, but there is also knowledge the rest of the world has lost, and the potential to be more than the shattered, bitter remnants of a once-great empire. He loves his homeland every bit as much as he loves Skyhold, and he can't stay here when there are so many things that need to be done there. Things worth far more than the happiness of one mage.

And worth more than the happiness of one ex-templar, no matter how precious that ex-templar is to him.

"Could you be happy here with me?" Cullen asks a third time, and the words are hardly more than a breath.

"I would be happy wherever you are," Dorian says, "but it doesn't matter, not when my homeland is so intent on destroying itself, and the rest of the world with it. I may be happy here, but I can do good there. You taught me the importance of that. You and the Inquisitor."

Cullen's throat works soundlessly for a moment, and when he smiles, Dorian's resolve almost fails. "So you're telling me I have no one to blame but myself?"

"Exactly," Dorian says in a weak imitation of his usual scathing tone. "It's your own fault for being so virtuous and heroic. How can I do anything but try to live up to that example?"

There's a moment where Dorian thinks Cullen will touch him. He wants it and fears it in equal measure, because one touch is all it will take to keep him here, to make him forget all his hopes for Tevinter.

Cullen swallows hard. Steps back, and raises a hand to the guards. "Open the gate."

The chains rattle and creak too loudly for Dorian to say anything else aloud. Instead, he looks at Cullen and tries to memorize every detail. Time will blur most of them eventually, but he prays it will leave him the look in Cullen's eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you skipped the fluff ending to read this one first, and you plan to go back, keep in mind that Dorian's reason for leaving is different in that version than this one.


End file.
